Film about SA's environmental disaster

South African environmental disaster the focus of Frederick Gert Tens next film

After "Bananas," "Bikes vs Cars" and "The young Zlatan" give the prized Malmo filmmaker Fredrik Gertten into a South African environmental disaster. Along with the two South African filmmaker is he doing now documentary "Jozi Gold" about how an unlikely environmental activist takes up the fight with the mining companies in Johannesburg.

At the end of the apartheid era in South Africa worked Malmo journalist Fredrik Gertten as a foreign correspondent in the country. Since then, he had a piece of his heart remains in South Africa.

- I worked there from 1986 to Mandela became president in 1994. It was such a dramatic time, so it remains in the body. I have a great love for the country and have many friends left, says Fredrik Gertten.

The relations lies behind his new film project actually started in Adam Welz head. Welz is a South African environmental journalist who began work on a documentary film about the mining industry in Johannesburg and made contact with Gert Tens film company WG Film. Gertten in turn contacted the South African Sylvia Vollenhoven, so now it's the three together are the film's directors. Vollenhoven is a name that many Swedes might remember.

- She was Expressen columnist during the apartheid years, but she's also my friend for thirty years. So I pulled her into this project, says Fredrik Gertten.

He calls the film "Jozi Gold" for a great story and the main character Mariette Liefferink for one of the best documentary film characters he has encountered. The scene of the film is Johannesburg (many called Jozi) where a third of all the gold in the world has been extracted.

- But now the gold finish and still are a lot of toxic mining slag heaps, a poisoned water systems, and the money is gone. The money has built cities like London and New York, but they are not left in Johannesburg. There is instead a gigantic environmental disaster, says Fredrik Gertten.

Now that gold is out of the mines , they have big companies sold the land on to companies that are about to dig through the slag heaps that are also full of uranium.

- People living there on radioactive slag heaps that are on the Chernobyl level. They sleep directly on the ground with only a piece of cardboard between them and the ground. Nowhere else in the world is this sort of pits so close to a city. And then you should know that Johannesburg is a twelve million city.

The main character in the film is Mariette Liefferink that Gertten calls a "unlikely environmentalist." A mother of four, without any formal training as a former Jehovah's Witness and suddenly decides to challenge mining companies. She is shown to have an ability to read on and pop the companies on your fingers.

- You get the feeling that if she can make a difference, then I can also do it. It opens new gold mines around the world all the time and every time you share the communities. You know that mountain will disappear, but you do not care about the consequences. In Johannesburg, there is a retrospect on how it ends.

Fredrik Gertten have been down there in South Africa and filmed and is now with the development of the film.

- We need to put together a funding and it is among the most frustrating now. I would like to work in a much higher pace, but the money keeps one back, says Fredrik Gertten.

He testifies that the money in the Swedish documentary film industry is so small that it makes it troublesome to make films with only Swedish funding and audiences.

- We need to make films that might work globally and receive funding from other countries. We have the staff and facilities that must be paid. Those who can make documentary films in Sweden today are young filmmakers who work for free in a few years and it is certainly a good way to buy into the industry, but the cost we do not work there. The films we do have to walk around on their production budget, we can not expect to make any money on it, says Fredrik Gertten.

Then it means you're not working on a few documentaries about Malmo now?

- No. I would think it would be fun to do more in Malmo, but we can not afford, says Fredrik Gertten as before "Bananas!" Made documentaries on the MFF, the Öresund bridge, Turning Torso, the Kockums crane and magazine work.

Do you work alongside a few other films than "Jozi Gold"?

- No. I have ideas, but is not there and film.

On 22 March arable Fredrik Gertten and the film's producer Margarete Jangård Film Festival Dox Cph in Copenhagen to present "Jozi Gold" and pitching it to financiers.

FSE in the press

As early as 1987, the US Environmental Protection Agency recognised that “.....problems related to mining waste may be rated as second only to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion in terms of ecological risk. The release to the environment of mining waste can result in profound, generally irreversible destruction of ecosystems.”

The expansion of a mining project that cuts through a protected water system and a proposed wildlife migration corridor in North West province has been given the go-ahead by environmental authorities.
The Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE), a group of community-based civil society organisations, has appealed the authorisation – arguing that “environmental decisions must achieve a balance between environmental and socio-economic developmental considerations through the concept of sustainable development”.
Read the full artiicle, including comment from the community, on OXPECKERS. Documentation is also available on the site.

A pioneering conservation plan to create a wildlife corridor linking the Pilanesberg National Park and the Madikwe Game Reserve appears to have collapsed because of mining and farming pressure in the North West Region.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) has appealed the environmental authorisation for the expansion of the mining operations of Pilanesberg Platinum Mines within a highest biodiversity sensitive area and a national freshwater ecosystem priority area, which the FSE alleges, will adversely impact on the functionality and viability of the proposed Heritage Park.
It is envisioned that the proposed Heritage Park will establish the third largest conservation estate of about 270 000ha to ultimately create a migratory corridor for bigger mammals by combining the Pilanesberg National Park with the Madikwe Game Reserve.

WESSA paid tribute to a wide range of outstanding environmental achievements with the presentation of the organisation’s Annual Awards. These Awards were presented at the organisation’s 90th AGM, and Mariette Liefferink of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment was one of the recipients.

The World Health Organization is collecting hair samples west of Johannesburg to see if residents near South Africa’s biggest city are suffering from excessive uranium pollution due to ore dumps from 130 years of gold mining.

The future of the uranium mining industry will be largely dependent on the price of the commodity and the profitability of uranium mines, while demand for uranium in nuclear power stations and potentially for nuclear weapons remains the main driver for the commodity.

Mariette Liefferink, CEO of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, a influential organisation in the mining sector. Liefferink speaks on Classic FM about Acid Mine Drainage.
To listen, visit this link: http://www.classicfm.co.za/classic-lifestyle/podcasts/2016/january/19-january-2016/acid-mine-drainage/view

South Africa is at the transition point of “peak water.” This is the moment when the economy transitions from a demand-driven state to a supply-constrained state. Peak water means that supply will be limited. This will affect economic growth and may result in social instability.

THE CRIMINAL investigation and the draft charges initiated against Village Main Reef for alleged contraventions of environmental legislation at Blyvooruitzicht (Blyvoor) mine outside Carletonville are among many legacy issues facing the mining industry today.

Lucas Misapitso casually holds a handful of poisoned earth in his hands. Behind him, the forlorn shacks of Tudor Shaft huddle helplessly against a toxic mountain of mine tailings that splits them in two.

The hazardous mining by-product raises two questions – who’s to blame and who should pay.
The acid mine drainage crisis is going to cost someone a lot of money, but probably not the people who caused it. The “polluter pays” principle was next to impossible to apply to the acid mine drainage problem in a retrospective way, said Marius Keet, chief director for mine water management at the department of water and sanitation.

The Federation for a Sustainable Environment is proud to announce the launch of the booklet titled “Rehabilitation of Mine Contaminated Eco-Systems. A Contribution to a Just Transition to a Low Carbon Economy to Combat Unemployment and Climate Change” by Mariette Liefferink of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE). The booklet was commissioned by the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) in collaboration with the Friedrick Ebert Stiftung.

Last week, the coalition of eight civil society and community organisations that has been resisting the proposed coal mine inside a protected area and strategic water source area in Mpumalanga launched further proceedings in the Pretoria High Court.

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